When women directors take up writings by women playwrights for the stage, does it shift the centre of axis somewhere? To this, Delhi-based theatre group Yellowcat’s latest project, Women by Women, might contain a clue if not an answer. Parting Gestures, one of the plays that make up the project, will be staged at Instituto Cervantes on Saturday. “We came up with the idea after December 2012, starting with six plays over this year before graduating to original writing,” says Sukhesh Arora of Yellowcat, whose previous works include The Imaginary Life of Dogs, a story about stories, human desires and talking canines, and Long Night of Theatre, a 24-hour workshop on creating a performance. Parting Gestures is the second Women by Women play. The play by Spanish writer Paloma Pedrero is a triptych of the stories The Colour of August, The Voucher and A Night in the Subway. Director Manjari Kaul says, “These are stories about urban realities and their shifts. In The Colour of August, two artists, a teacher and a student, meet after eight years. The younger one has done well for herself, the teacher, however, hasn’t and this tension unfolds them and casts a shadow over their friendship.” The Voucher, on the other hand, is about a separated couple fighting to keep their dog, throwing up questions of ownership as well as love and fidelity. A battle of a different kind — of class and gender — mark A Night in the Subway in which an upper-class woman finds herself locked in a subway with a labour-class man. “She immediately thinks that he is a thug and would loot her but as time passes, their relationship begins to change,” says Kaul. Kaul, 27, a professional artiste with the group Improper Fractions, was drawn to the “urban realities” of Pedrero’s stories. “I applied to direct the play after coming across a post on Yellowcat’s website. Of the five plays I was offered, I selected this one because each story has an interesting push and pull happening between the characters,” she says. The rhythms of a city form the soundscape of the play as Kaul stays true to her theatre philosophy that “there is no holistic theatre, merely unresolvable conflicts, points of view and other bits that hang together even when they don’t fit together”. Parting Gestures will be staged at Instituto Cervantes on Saturday. Contact: 43681907
